Name: rmT116609 Date: 10/22/2003


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
Currently, a JVM cam have at most one 'live' Authenticator object at any
given time; i.e. the one set using Authenticator.setDefault(). This causes
problems in some applications. I propose that a new method be added to
the URLConnection API:

    void setAuthenticator(java.net.Authenticator auth)
       throws InvalidStateException;

This method would allow an application to bind a specific Authenticator
to an unconnected URLConnection object to be used instead of the JVM-wide
default Authenticator.

JUSTIFICATION :
This method will make it possible to do a number of things that are otherwise
hard to implement in a multi-threaded application. For example, if a URL has
a 'userinfo' componenent, the application can create a once-off Authenticator
for the URL's username and password and attach it to the URLConnection. It does not need to worrying about interfering with (or leaking passwords to) other
threads.
(Incident Review ID: 216097)
======================================================================